The NHL has done the right thing. It immediately condemned what a still-anonymous fan in the crowd in London, Ontario, did to the Philadelphia Flyers’ Wayne Simmonds on Thursday night.

A day after Simmonds, a black winger, had a banana thrown at him during an exhibition game, the NHL and the entire hockey world stood behind him, every other black player in the league and every other player of non-white, non-North American extraction. From the top down, the NHL made the kind of statement a responsible sports organization should make. Blunt language that can’t be misinterpreted: “stupid,” “ignorant,” “in no way representative."

Now, it has to go one step further, to make sure nothing remotely resembling the banana incident happens on the NHL’s watch ever again.

The NHL has to borrow a page from the world soccer community and start its own “Say No to Racism” campaign.

If you watched the Women’s World Cup from Germany this summer, or the men’s World Cup from South Africa last summer, you know about this. Before every match, on the field and for the cameras, players from both sides held huge banners bearing those words. This dates back to the previous men’s World Cup, also in Germany, in 2006.

The NHL doesn’t have world soccer’s problem of rampant racism among “fans” in numerous European countries, directed generally at players of color, even ones who play for those fans’ own teams. The banana routine is old hat for old-school bigots over there. Black players, regardless of their nation of origin (and that includes Americans like DaMarcus Beasley and Oguchi Onyewu) have faced chanting, banners, gestures, monkey-like noises, even physical assaults.

The “Say No” campaign is the velvet glove. The iron fist is the harsh sanctions: heavy fines, forfeiting games and points and holding matches in empty stadiums.

That’s what happens when a sport lets things go too far for too long.

The NHL, on the other hand, can nip this in the bud. They can cut this off long before it becomes an epidemic, before knuckleheaded fans can feel comfortable enough to commit some similar act toward the next black players they encounter, to disrupt another game—and to hide in the cowardly anonymity of the crowd.

A “Say No To Racism” movement would do the trick. It doesn’t have to be extravagant, but it cannot be subtle. Copy soccer’s actions—just make them pre-emptive actions and not belated reactions.

Instill those same extreme penalties on fans and the franchises they “support," starting with heavy fines if they can’t police their actions and provide the customers and players with some security. Revoke the tickets of fans who violate this; the NBA’s Orlando Magic had to do this a few years ago when a fan went way over the line taunting Dikembe Mutombo.

And get every owner, general manager, coach and player invested in sending an unequivocal message— including a huge banner held aloft before every game the rest of the preseason, on opening night and in each home opener. Make sure the TV networks don’t cut to commercial when they do it.

Don’t dismiss this as an overreaction. Had soccer’s powers-that-be overreacted decades ago, maybe that sport wouldn’t have to hold up those banners today.

In fact, the NHL’s very impressive record of support for players of color is precisely the reason it has to go hard against this now. When the league, and others who watch it closely, say that they can’t remember players having to face this from fans in a very long time, believe them.

The NHL has a different kind of diversity than other big-time sports leagues, a blend of colors, cultures, nationalities and ethnicities unlike the NFL, baseball and the NBA. Many of those players have faced ugliness while coming up through the ranks, and the black players—more isolated than they are in other sports—are no different.

Once they get to the bigs, though? Well, once again, Ontario was an isolated incident. Hockey fans are far from demure, but this, refreshingly, is apparently not in their repertoire. Which is more than can be said for other, more popular sports in America (not to mention any specifically, like pro and college basketball and pro and college football).

The NHL is already set apart from those sports; now it can set itself apart in a different way.

The anti-racism message has been sent. But don’t just send it for one day. Keep sending it—because the other side won’t stop sending theirs, as the soccer world found out too late.